Gail Shister joined The Inquirer in 1979 as its first female sportswriter, a barrier she also broke at The New Orleans States-Item (1975-78) and Buffalo Evening News (1974). She was the Inquirer's television columnist for 25 years.

You don't see many women at Woody's, but Chelsea Clinton popped in last week.
To a packed house of screaming supporters, the 28-year-old former first child led a presidential pep rally for her mother at one of the oldest gay bars in Philadelphia.

He's here, he's queer, call him Your Honor.
Backed by a lone bagpiper, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Daniel Anders will take the oath of office today at City Hall - the first openly gay man to don the (judicial) robe in city history.

Local labor leader Thomas Paine Cronin, for whom every mayor is King George III, loves a good fight.
So it comes as no surprise that the former middleweight boxer says what he'll miss most when he hangs up his gloves tomorrow will be slugging it out with Philadelphia's elected monarchs.

Almost 30 years of Eyewitness News is coming to Temple.
CBS3 will donate its vast archive of more than 20,000 videotapes to the university's Paley Library, CBS3 president Michael Colleran and Temple president Ann Weaver Hart are to announce today in a joint news conference.

Over ocean perch at the Palm, Al Taubenberger is talking manure.
"Manure is highly concentrated with nitrogen, which is very important for plant growth," he says. "Most fertilizers are nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus."

In the courtroom of life, there's not much order for Philadelphia judge Lisa Richette.
She's been beaten and robbed on the streets of Center City - twice. She's been punched in the head while sitting in her car. She's had her chambers taken over by a deranged woman who donned her judicial robes.

The presence of Ken Burns' father looms large in his son's latest PBS epic.
But viewers won't know it.
An unidentified photograph of Lt. Robert Kyle Burns Jr. is the first and last image in The War, a 15-hour documentary series about World War II. It launches Sept. 23.

Sixty may be the new 40, but Glenn Close doesn't buy the math.
"I have this image that, one day, my body will start melting and there's nothing I can do about it," she says with a quick laugh. "You can't fight gravity forever."